Chrysippus' famous dictum "every word is by nature ambiguous" serves
well as an appropriately open-ended motto for this excellent book. One
could frame an inquiry about ambiguity much more narrowly than Atherton
has done, but scholars with any reason to consult the book will be
grateful, I think, that she has chosen to exclude little that has a
bearing on the topic. Atherton explores in exhaustive detail the role of
ambiguity in virtually every domain of Stoic thought: moral psychology,
epistemology, grammar, semantics, logic, stylistics and rhetoric,
philosophical method, and the principles of classification. The systematic
character of Stoic philosophy itself justifies this thorough search for
interconnections and cross-currents, though Atherton is careful to raise
tough questions about the coherence of the Stoic use and application of
the concept in each area. A second factor broadens the scope of this
investigation beyond these already wide boundaries. Because the roots of
the Stoic theory reach deeply into earlier philosophers, especially
Aristotle, Atherton's project amounts almost to a history of the subject
in ancient thought.

Atherton boldly aims this study at an amazingly
wide variety of scholars: classicists, Hellenistic philosophers,
philosophers of language, theoretical and comparative linguists, and
historians of logic. Besides the ancient authors and the classicists who
study them readers should be prepared to encounter contemporary figures
like Chomsky, Frege, Lyons, Scheffler, and Saussure for detailed
comparisons with Stoic and ancient theories generally. Classicists will be
relieved that Atherton never allows her extensive knowledge of
contemporary linguistics or philosophy of language to tempt her into
making tendentious or anachronistic judgments. But given that comparisons
between ancient and modern theories are inevitable and even desirable,
Atherton succeeds brilliantly in employing contemporary thought to reveal
both "the uniquely Stoic motivation behind the classifications" of
ambiguity as well as to point out the limitations of Stoic conceptions,
e.g., the extreme narrowness of their grammatical concepts and
categories.

Noting the fuzziness and vagueness of the concept of
ambiguity, as well as disagreements between ancients and moderns about
whether ambiguity is a good thing or not, Atherton observes that ambiguity
is "very much what you make it." The Stoics did make a great deal of
ambiguity because "seeing or missing an ambiguity could make a difference
to one's general success as a human being." The substantial third chapter
(91 pages, adroitly titled "Morality Talks: The Origins and Limits of
Stoic Interest in Ambiguity") properly emphasizes the practical, ethical
focus of Stoic philosophizing; provides a detailed summary of the central
aspects of Stoic philosophy from the perspective of Stoic logical and
linguistic theory; and shows precisely how making the wrong decisions,
viz., assenting incorrectly to the impressions one receives, can ruin
one's life and make one unhappy. A case where ambiguity plays a crucially
important role in moral reasoning is the category of the preferred
indifferents, objects of choice that are morally neutral, e.g., health and
wealth. If a person does not disambiguate goods into moral goods and
non-moral preferences, the Stoics argue, one inevitably will end up
miserable. This splendid chapter is too vast in scope and rich in detail
to be summarized, but I call special attention to the nuanced comparisons
of Stoic ideas with the linguistic and dialectical theories of Aristotle
and Epicurus; incisive analyses of Stoic views on literary style and on
the concept of clarity; and convincing explanations of their relative lack
of interest in semantic multivalence. One shortcoming is a rather brief
and somewhat vague account of why the Stoics did not even notice
Aristotle's pervasive use of homonymy, particularly in his concept of
"focal meaning" or pros hen equivocity.

Chapters 4 and 5
provide detailed commentaries on three short but highly significant texts.
Chapter 4 examines the only explicit definition of ambiguity
attributed to the Stoics, a brief passage in D.L. 7.62. Atherton skilfully
tracks the possible meanings of amphibolia among the notions of
ambiguity, vagueness, non-specificity, and metaphor. Considerable
assistance in the search for definitions comes from Diodorus Cronus who
made the striking claim that there is no such thing as ambiguity. Chapter
5 compares two classifications of ambiguities, one explicitly ascribed to
the Stoics, the other an eclectic blend of Stoic and non-Stoic elements.
Atherton presents freshly edited versions of these important texts along
with precise, readable translations. The first comprises the final chapter
of Galen's short On Linguistic Sophisms. Galen reports Stoic views
on ambiguity merely to supplement what he considers the more comprehensive
classification of linguistic fallacies in Aristotle's Sophistical
Refutations. Atherton shows how Galen's notorious hostility against
the Stoics blows up in his face: Stoic semantic and syntactic theory is
more innovative and sophisticated than Aristotle's, but Galen seems to be
unaware of the fact. A somewhat longer classificatory scheme is preserved
in Aelius Theon's teaching rhetorical handbook the progymnasmata
(Preliminary Rhetorical Exercises).

These two taxonomies
comprise the superstructure for the 200-page chapter 6, the heart of the
book. A substantial section is devoted to each of six species of
ambiguity: common ambiguities, homonymies, elleipsis and pleonasm,
significant/non-significant part, hyperbaton and interpolation, and
reference. This part of the book will most profitably be consulted as a
reference work. Each section begins with the relevant passages from Galen
and Theon, usually accompanied by pertinent Aristotelian texts. In
addition to the linguistic topics other major topics discussed include
Stoic criticism of the Platonic theory of forms; Stoic views on Platonic
and Aristotelian dialectic; the Stoic theory of autonymy discussed and
reworked in Augustine's de dialectica; and a general Stoic theory
of signs that is prominent in Augustine's de magistro, a work that,
interestingly, also contains a version of the "use/mention"
distinction.

Chapter 7 takes up one of the major roles assigned to
ambiguity by the Stoics: the creation of fallacies or deceptively
persuasive arguments. Discerning and removing ambiguities is crucial for
the Stoic project of attaining rational and moral consistency. The Stoic
treatment is rooted in Aristotle's more comprehensive discussions, but
Atherton properly emphasizes the importance of paradoxes (e.g., the
Sorites or "heaping" argument) and puzzles as additional motivating
factors. Of particular interest here is the contrast between Stoic
commitment to the effectiveness of logic and dialectic and sceptical
attacks on its value, especially that of Sextus Empiricus.

In the
final, eighth chapter Atherton discusses how Stoic ideas fit into the
larger world of ancient rhetorical and grammatical theory. Her conclusions
are necessarily tentative since most of the Stoic texts were already rare
in antiquity and most that was distinctive in Stoic grammatical theory
lived on only in epitomes and commentaries. Atherton's study is a
significant contribution to our understanding of ancient literary theory
in large part because it is so successful in retrieving and interpreting
carefully the limited amount of textual material that survives.
Philological rigour and sensitivity are combined with an enviable command
of contemporary linguistic theory and philosophy of language.

Two
editorial features of this volume warrant comment. No need to highlight
the production values: as always Cambridge University Press offers an
admirable, flawlessly printed book. Atherton is to be commended, first,
for exceptionally thorough documentation of the countless textual
references that are inevitable in a large study of Hellenistic philosophy.
She provides the standard von Arnim SVF references, of course, but even
more helpful to non-specialists -- but, regrettably, uncommon -- is the
inclusion of references to the appropriate sections of The Hellenistic
Philosophers by A. A. Long and D.N. Sedley (Cambridge University
Press, 1987). Second, and more important, the volume is endowed with a
whopping 35 pages of indexes, an absolute necessity in a work of this
kind, but, nevertheless, an essential tool that is too often absent.